Ten years as an army officer, twenty years in the NSA. Over the past thirty years, Murphy had seen countless people.
Brilliant criminals, philanthropists with good and noble hearts, fanatics who had devoted themselves to ideology.
He was adept at quickly reading and classifying people.
After interacting with someone for just a few minutes, he could reach a rough conclusion about anyone. What this person wanted, how far they could go, and under what circumstances they would break. That had been the secret to Murphy's rise to Director of the NSA.
But—
"What on earth is that?"
Seoha was slowly walking across the papers.
Smiling broadly, as if delighted.
Was he a good person?
Yes.
But what frightened him was that this goodness did not stem from conventional moral values. Seoha appeared to be someone who would choose his own brand of good without hesitation, even if it spelled disaster for humanity.
'What should I do?'
One thing was certain.
He was not acting for some grand cause like paralyzing the financial system or national security. Because if that were the reason, there was no way he would be smiling so cheerfully like that.
A chill ran down his spine. At the same time, a sense of relief washed over him.
This young man was not an asset that could be controlled. They had simply been lucky. In that the tastes of a genius with an overwhelming intellect still happened to align with the direction of humanity's happiness and prosperity.
On the CCTV, Seoha stood barefoot atop hundreds of sheets of paper, glaring at one point. He moved his steps. But something was strange. Whether he was trying not to step on the papers, or avoiding something invisible, the direction he placed his feet was not ordinary.
"What is he doing?"
Miller muttered lowly as he watched the screen.
"Hwan."
"Yes..."
Hwan could not tear his eyes from the screen.
"What is that gait?"
"It's a guess, but it seems what Seoha is seeing right now is not the space we know."
Veins bulged at Miller's temples.
"In English!"
"Riemannian geometry deals with very high-dimensional dimensions and curvature. Could it be that Seoha is currently walking through the world of that geometry?"
He shook his head dismissively.
"What nonsense are you talking about..."
He couldn't finish his sentence.
Seoha took another step. This time bending his waist low as if avoiding something. There was only paper on the floor, and there was ample space all the way to the ceiling.
"..."
"What on earth is that guy seeing?"
Murphy rose from his seat without realizing it.
"Found it."
Seoha's low voice.
Where his gaze was directed, chaotically scattered vectors were converging on one point. As if a giant hole had been torn open in the middle of the ocean.
Seoha, who had been walking on the papers, stopped at that point, knelt, and wrote the final equation.
Scritch.
Hwan could not understand this situation at all. He said with a pale face,
"When mathematicians solve problems, there is an order. They establish hypotheses and definitions, and select the axiom system to apply. Then they gradually narrow the scope and explore the existence of a solution. In that process, mathematicians go through countless trials and errors."
He swallowed hard.
"But that man processed all of that simultaneously."
What he wrote last was the Laplacian boundary condition.
It was a fence that any mathematician should have erected at the very beginning. A net, set up so the answer could not escape.
But Seoha had already bitten into the nape of the prey before even casting the net. Most likely, the thought of drawing boundaries had never even crossed his mind. He had simply kindly informed mediocrities like himself, 'From here to here is the answer.'
'Is he really seeing it?'
The space where hundreds of sheets of paper were spread out. The curvature of dimensions and the flow of vectors unfolding there.
He was a mathematician in his own right; if he could see such things, he would gladly sell his soul to the devil.
Seoha straightened up.
"Daisy."
[Speak, Master.]
"Convert that point into real-world coordinates."
[Understood.]
Whiiir—
The laptop's cooling fans began to spin.
On the screen, Daisy scrunched her brows with an incredulous expression. Compared to the supercomputer in the AT&T Building that she had handled like her own limbs, the laptop's specs were worse than a primitive man's stone axe.
[Master, I will link with the main body.]
At the same time as she spoke, the cooling fans in the data center deep underground in the AT&T Building began to roar in unison.
"Wh-what? All of a sudden!"
"Is Oracle angry? Looks like something big happened."
Server room staff shot up from their seats in surprise.
A hyperscale cluster of tens of thousands of servers connected in parallel cut across a vast ocean of traffic. Code poured down the screen like a torrential downpour, and countless red lines stretched out across a giant world map.
A sanctuary protected by thick fog was torn away in an instant.
Daisy marveled. A signal whose origin could not be pinpointed at all. But the space they were treading upon was a world created by Master. A dimension woven by his own formulas, a multi-dimensional structure composed of a few waves and curved surfaces. And a world that could fully unfold only inside the head of one person among all of humanity.
[4.127 million zombie nodes identified, 31 routing layers confirmed.]
"Lock them all down."
[Understood.]
Daisy was looking at millions of nodes simultaneously.
The terrorists had stolen Master's world to create a labyrinth. Fury surged. Daisy deeply furrowed her brows.
[Commencing node lockdown.]
Numbers climbed on the screen.
Ten thousand. One hundred thousand. One million.
One could feel the opponents panicking as they detected the anomaly. They hurriedly tried to sever connections and flee. Daisy's avatar spoke in a cold voice.
[This is Master's world. Without permission, you cannot move a single step.]
This was not a painstaking, drawn-out pursuit.
It was merely the owner of the space closing the door.
[All 4.127 million nodes locked down.]
Now they could not go anywhere. Even if they shut down the servers or moved physically, it would be the same. Because she had already identified the unique phase hidden behind the fog.
[I will find the origin point.]
The millions of red lines fixed to the nodes returned like salmon leaving their spawning grounds. As if time were rewinding, all the scattered nodes began to seek the origin point.
The thirty-one router layers peeled away one by one.
[Layer 19 removed.]
.
.
[Layer 31 removed.]
[All bypass routes eliminated.]
The packet shells fell away, and as the encryption was stripped, only the pure internal signal remained.
The red lines swirled.
A spiral like a massive tornado. The network spread across the entire world began to be sucked into a single point like a black hole.
Daisy's blue eyes glinted coldly.
[Coordinates confirmed.]
Just as Seoha was about to stand up, a loud clatter was heard. The door burst open as if it might break, and three people rushed in simultaneously.
Perhaps out of breath, Miller roughly loosened his tie.
"Di-did you find it? Their headquarters?"
Seoha blinked as he looked at them.
The room was a mess with papers, and he was barefoot. He felt a little embarrassed. Seoha pointed at the monitor and said,
"Yes. I found it."
"Where! China? Russia?"
Seoha fidgeted with his fingers as if troubled.
"The coordinates are pointing at America."
The two men started and pulled the laptop closer to check the coordinates.
"Oh, my God!"
"Is this really certain?"
Seoha nodded.
Murphy looked at Miller. His hand trembled as he pulled out his cell phone.
"Wait. Let's verify first. If this leaks..."
The two men's eyes met.
For a brief moment, complex calculations passed between their heads. Seoha watched them and quietly picked up his shoes.
The coordinates pointed to Washington D.C.
It was the capital of America.
"May I take my leave now?"
Miller said with a desperate face.
"C-could you stay just a little longer? We need someone to analyze the evidence. But..."
"Yes."
"Do you have any idea who created this algorithm? Hwan said it was definitely a mathematician."
Seoha shook his head.
"Then please rest for a while. There are many good restaurants nearby. If you ask, the staff will bring you anything."
Slam.
They closed the door and hurriedly ran off somewhere.
Seoha sat down with an expression of deep thought.
[Master.]
"Yeah."
[You saw the origin point of the SS Algorithm, Master. The structure of the formulas, operational habits, algorithm design methods. You must know better than anyone that every person has a mathematical fingerprint.]
"Yeah."
[Why did you not tell them?]
"Because that person might not be the culprit. If there's guilt, the FBI will uncover it."
Seoha's sullen face.
Daisy, who prided herself on being the only one who truly understood Master, thought she might know the real reason.
[Master, there is a pizza place nearby with a revisit rate of 72 percent. Review rating of 4.9, a shop specializing in New York style thin crust, but said to be so delicious that even Italians frequent it.]
Seoha slowly raised his head.
"Are you trying to comfort me?"
On the screen, Daisy put on a coy, indifferent expression, pretending not to know.
[This is a word from your personal secretary. Mealtime has long since passed. You are currently 7.3 kilograms below your standard weight. Your muscle mass is 81 percent of the average for your age group. Yet your caloric intake today is a mere 211 kilocalories.]
Seoha gave a warm smile.
"Thank you."
[Not at all. I am a competent secretary.]
Oracle, responsible for the safety and convenience of ten million New York citizens. But she wanted to use all her abilities solely for her master. She had her own logical reasons for this.
She had simply calculated that ensuring one Master's meal would have greater historical significance for humanity than looking after millions of people.
* * *
Dozens of black Suburbans surrounded the building with their headlights off.
It was a strike team composed solely of FBI direct-action teams and special operations agents, without support from other agencies. On their chests were embroidered tactical numbers assigned to each of them instead of FBI insignia.
"Cut the power."
Miller spoke into the radio.
Pak—
In an instant, all lights in the building went out.
Complete darkness, without even emergency lights.
"Go, go, go!"
With the sound of flashbangs, agents breached simultaneously from all sides.
Everyone had resolute expressions, as if they had arrived on a battlefield.
Bang, bang!
Rat-a-tat!
Gunshots rang out from all directions.
"FBI! Everyone down! Hands above your heads!"
Hackers who had been typing at their keyboards just moments ago lay groaning, pinned down. Unlike ordinary hacker groups, even at the moment of arrest, they prioritized destroying evidence.
"Don't move!"
Chief Miller set foot on the scene wearing a bulletproof vest.
The smell of gunpowder surged in on the heat of the server room. He trudged toward the man sitting slumped in front of the largest main console in the center of the room.
"Walter Calloway, 61, former professor. Is it you? The one behind this madness?"
A middle-aged man.
He was a man exuding an intellectual air. He had the neat, composed feeling of someone who had worn formal clothes for a long time.
Looking up at Miller through crooked gold-rimmed glasses.
"You people shouldn't have been able to find this place?"
His face was still full of disbelief.
Miller snorted.
"It's been a while since I've seen a criminal who underestimates the FBI like this."
"No, no."
He shook his head.
"The FBI or CIA couldn't have found this place. The mathematicians working in places like that are obvious. Losers who fled the academic world because they had no future. My algorithm couldn't possibly have been tracked by the likes of them."
Miller shrugged.
"You're the one who needs to answer questions. Not me.
Well, we have plenty of time, so let's take it slow. You'll never see the light of day again, after all."
But the man persisted as if that were the only thing that mattered to him. He asked with flashing eyes.
"Seoha?"
The chief's face contorted.